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Design

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Posted by Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Any aspiring designers out there? Possible job prospect in website design.

Hey,

So, I'm an aspiring developer. I think I'm doing pretty well at learning how to build sites through HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery, PHP and WordPress as a CMS.

What I am not so good at though is the actual design side of building a site. I have a vision in my head but it doesn't look so good when put down on paper, or the screen. Much like anything I do when it comes to thinking of a design, art at school was the same. I can see what I want to create and can paint but it's having the picture drawn first that tricky.

So, is anyone here on TreeHouse more a designer then a developer and looking for some hands on experience?

I have two dev companies in the process of getting off the ground and an ecommerce site. One dev company is purely building sites for clients. The other two companies involve design but are the company's websites, if that makes sense.

What I'm hoping is there is someone who would like to team up with me, do some design work and see their designs turned into live websites. I'm working on 5 sites at the moment, unfortunately there's no pay for this at this stage but it is a promising relationship as once the first couple of sites are built and live, there's a tonne of work just behind it.

There is a lot more information that I will discuss in more depth with anyone who is genuinely wanting to get involved and start something. Over the coming few months, things will progress quickly and while I can't promise it, I hope there'll be a job for someone later this year.

Anyone who is interested, pop a message here or email me at public@ultimatewebdevs.co.uk. If I get an email from you, you'll get a reply from a more personal email. Just a way of reducing spam from bots using this email.

Your location is not important to me, with Skype and all the cloud storage available, remote working is fine.

And, great job guys at TreeHouse. Your teachings are enabling me to start new businesses and hopefully create jobs...just the reason I signed up!!!!

Thanks.

3 Answers

Ernest Grzybowski
Ernest Grzybowski
Treehouse Project Reviewer
Ernest Grzybowski
Ernest Grzybowski
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Hey Matthew Campbell

I feel your pain. Design was one of the hardest things for me when it came to web design.

All of the research I have done can be simply boiled down to two blog posts by Nick Pettit.

This one: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/5-design-tips-every-developer-should-know

and this one: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/5-mistakes-web-designers-make

Spacing, Value, and not trying anything different were big mistakes I made. Also, I now give myself almost as much time to design a website as I do to code it up. There's literally billions of webpages. To make something look different, and to make it look good at the same time is quite possibly one of the hardest things you can do. Hope this helps you a bit, but the key for me was to actually spend time on design.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

This is the site I'm working on today: http://www.ultimatewebdevs.co.uk/testspace5/#

It's for a local bar/cafe. Needs to be exciting to attract people to it. I just struggle to come up with ideas sometimes.

I struggle to turn the image in my head into an image on the screen. I'm sure if I was competent in the Creative Suite it would probably be better as I could create content. I'll have a read of the blog posts, may have done already.

What I have realised so far is to think of a design and then strip it back to the bare minimum. The first pages I made had loads of stuff on them and looked childish, stripped back, it looked professional but that's about as far as I can go. Minimalist styles all the time.

This is one of my new companies sites I've kind of stalled on developing. http://ultimatewebdevs.co.uk/testspace4/

Any feedback would be nice Ernest Grzybowski lol.

Ernest Grzybowski
Ernest Grzybowski
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Okay, all of the following comments are purely opinion.

Let's start with the first link. Awesome animation! I would personally cut out the background images, and get rid of the gradients. Next if this is a place of business you want to sell the upper most part of the webpage so that the user stays. No boring 12pt font and long lines to read. A big image or a slider would do in my opinion.

For the second link, I'm not sure what you're trying to create, but I don't like the logo too much, the text is small, and I would get rid of the gradient nav bar.

Again, I don't have much time to look at it, but that should at least give you something to work with.

Ernest Grzybowski
Ernest Grzybowski
Treehouse Project Reviewer

Double post. Sorry.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

The second link is something I haven't looked at for about a month and in that time have mulitplied my knowledge massively so will probably be changing it about a lot. There was a margin under the gradient header with a top box shadow, it kinda worked but moved it all up but do think the header needs work. The logo does need some work, perhaps bigger. I've made it bigger for a Facebook page image and it looks better bigger.

Onto the main topic though, the first link.

Thanks very much about animation. It is something that came to me and I wanted to try out. I too think it works, perhaps needs a little tweaking. I'm currently experimenting with reducing the width of the three rows to about 50% and having a a second box on each row which will fade in after the slide in or slide in from the other side. Just so there's some static content like a logo etc. This site will be moved over to WordPress shortly.

As for the nav bar. It does need finishing, I have some ideas for it but I don't think it's so important on this site as it is more for advertising upcoming events and general news. All of which needs to be on the homepage really. Also, I think that content won't always be seen in slideshows because I'm thinking people will only be on the homepage for a few seconds. I'm also not a fan of the gradients and thought I'd left a pattern on the bottom two boxes.

And you've hit the nail on the head with the background and sliding in boxes background. I just don't know what to do with them. I tried a black paper effect background, and some subtle patterns for the three boxes backgrounds. I'm lacking inspiration. Must be because it's Friday!!! Need to take a piece of advise from TreeHouse and Nick Pettit and not work Fridays.

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Tweaked. Think I'm getting somewhere.

Johan Hernández
Johan Hernández
4,141 Points
Johan Hernández
Johan Hernández
4,141 Points

Hi I like to design and to learn a lot, I haven't finish high-school but I think I do it pretty well, check my most recent work: http://climatizacr.com

Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points
Matt Campbell
Matt Campbell
9,767 Points

Hi Johan Hernández.

Could you email me at the given address with some suggestions or designs for the site at this link please.

http://www.ultimatewebdevs.co.uk/testspace5/#

Thank you.